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Providence

From Street Art to Hitchhiking, with a Bit of Birch Sap Drinking in Gothenburg

May 16th, 2012

Here’s our look at what’s happening today in PechaKucha.

Presentations
We’ve got two new presentations on the site, one from Curitiba and one from St. Louis. In “The Street Is Alive” (in Portuguese), Jorge Galvao shares his graffiti work, and talks about his passion for street art, and then in “Hitchhiking for Sanity,” Myles Dickason shares some of his hitchhiking adventures.

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150699906134402.455596.607249401&type=3&l=b983b49260

Photos
Here are today’s event photos to take in, coming from a few of our PKN cities. Above, the scene at Providence’s PKN Vol. 35, which was held back in February.

PKN Gothenburg Vol. 31

The photo above is from the recent PKN Gothenburg Vol. 31 (see the full Facebook gallery, all photos by Nettan Kock), and below is a report from that city’s organizer, Jesper Larsson. You can also find all Gothenburg presentations (in Swedish) on its YouTube channel.

On April 24th, we arranged our Vol. 31 of PechaKucha Gothenburg with a great turnout!

Annelie Hulthén used mobile photos to show some of the backsides of the life of a politician. Our new city architect showed aerial photos of Gothenburg to show how much space is wasted on cars instead of human beings. Peter Korn told us about digging and how to plant exotic plants on stony Swedish hillsides. Sushi chef José Seruda spoke about “omakase” and his idea of Scandinavian sushi using locally produced fish and seafood. Siv Burell talked about the language Esperanto which celebrates 125 years this year. Klara Hansson spoke about perma culture and what’s edible within the city centre. Jeanette Fagerström told the story that led up to her opening a sewing machine café in Gothenburg (similar to an internet café but with sewing machines instead of computers). Helena Andersson, Sebastian Popescu & Evelina Valtersson finished of the evening with a presentation about their project “Bostadsrotation” (residential rotation) where people change housing and routines with another person for a couple of days.

In the break, Klara Hansson and her friends served up a ‘Kokoro salad‘ based on wild city plants such as Garlic-mustard, Celandine, Common wood sorrel, Dandelion, Sorrel, Lady’s Mantle, Daisy, Rowan Leaf, Ground elder and last but not least Lovage. They also served fresh natural birch sap. In this walkthrough video during the beer break, organizer Jesper Larsson tries out the birch sap and talks to former presenter Sebastian Näslund about it.

We totally forgot to celebrate it, but the last presentation of the evening was actually #300 since we started!

PKN Muscat

Links
Looking for some interesting PechaKucha-related articles? We’ve got you covered. The photo above shows the team behind the soon-to-launch PKN series in Muscat (the organizer, Sara Fida, is second from right).

Calendar
Tonight (May 16), it’s PKN Wagga Wagga Vol. 6, and tomorrow night (May 17) you can look to these three events: PKN Hanoi Vol. 4, PKN For a peek at what’s coming later this month, you can always check our calendar.

PKN Providence Vol. 28

August 9th, 2011

PKN Providence Vol. 28

We sure love seeing PechaKucha Nights being held outdoors, and the latest city to do so was Providence for its recent Vol. 28 — the presenters are listed on the official event page. All photos were taken by Frank Mullin, and there’s more to see in this Picasa web album.

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PKN Providence in the News

June 8th, 2011

PKN Providence in the News

PechaKucha Night in Providence gets some nice coverage in the Providence Journal — you can read the article online here, but organizer Michael Gazdacko tells us that the print edition is a 2-page spread with plenty of photos.

PechaKucha Day in Providence

April 1st, 2011

PechaKucha Day in Providence

How’s this for an honor: This week’s PechaKucha Night in Providence Vol. 24 — their second anniversary, considering PKNs are held monthly there — not only attracted an amazing crowd of over 300, but it also marked the official designation of March 30 as “PechaKucha Day” in the city of Providence. Don’t believe us? That’s the official proclamation you see in this post, signed by mayor Angel Taveras. Congratulations to PKN Providence organizer Michael Gazdacko and his team for their hard work, and a tip of the hat also to Stephanie Gerson, who launched the series and helped built it during her time as organizer.

Goodbyes from Providence

November 5th, 2010

PechaKucha Night in Providence is still healthy and strong — the momentous Vol. 20 happens this month, on November 16 — but the organizer who started the series there, Stephanie Gerson, has recently passed the baton on to someone else as she’s leaving the city, and we loved the following message from her so much that we wanted to share it.

Just a quick message to share what an absolute pleasure it’s been starting PechaKucha Night in Providence, and hosting it here for a year and a half! PK has created quite a stir in this city; I seem to have become somewhat of a local celebrity for bringing it to town, and I believe we’re the only city besides Tokyo that has enough demand & supply to host nights every single month! I’m moving to New York in a week, I handed off the reigns to a fabulous new host, and look forward to participating in PKs in the big apple. Thanks again for starting something so brilliant, so simple, so human, and giving me the opportunity to share it with Providence. Yeehaw!

PKN Providence in the News

August 6th, 2010

Last week’s PechaKucha Night in Providence Vol. 16 gets a rather nice recap thanks to this piece from The Providence Phoenix, and you gotta love a title like this: “Human contact is at the heart of PechaKucha.” And how’s this for a venue:

The setting was perfect: outdoors at the Steel Yard, on the city’s West side, on a clear summer night, with free wine and beer, a Haven Brothers truck, and big, spectacular art all around — from a sculpture made of bicycle parts to the Flower Tower, a 10-foot pyramid of plants.

Melissa Withers

March 13th, 2010

Melissa Withers

Hot on the heels of Providence’s latest PechaKucha Night — this week’s Vol. 12 — let’s give a listen to a presentation from last month’s Vol. 11 in the form of Melissa Withers‘ “A New Paradigm for Civic Engagement (Or, How I Got My Groove Back).”

Melissa gives us a great introduction, well OK a pitch, for Independent Diplomat — a newly formed organization that gives voices to countries that can’t be heard.

Shae Janiga

January 19th, 2010

Shae Janiga

You may remember that it wasn’t so long ago that Tokyo featured a presentation by an 11-year-old — Kaden Cowan, whose presentation you can actually watch online — and now it’s Providence’s turn to feature a very young presenter, Shae Janiga. Here’s a report from organizer Stephanie Gerson.

She was fabulous: her name is Shae Janiga and she’s a 6th grader at Wyman School in Providence. She plays the piano, violin, and soccer, and Loves horseback riding. She also speaks fluent Slovak and Loves to travel. But most importantly, according to her, Shae is a great big sister to her 3 siblings. Her presentation was called “Global Soccer for All.” She started by talking about how soccer has enriched her own life, e.g. by giving her the opportunity to make new friends, travel, and gain more self-confidence. Then she zoomed out to what soccer can do for countries, e.g. enabling the people of countries that have geopolitically tense relations to get along, and respect each other, on the field. (May I remind you she is 11!) But, there’s one major problem. (And yes, she made us wait a whole 20 seconds on that ‘problem’ slide.) The problem being: that girls all over the world don’t play soccer. In fact, in many countries, especially countries where women have fewer rights than men, women are actively discouraged from soccer. So how to solve this problem? Well, what she plans to do is live next year with her cousins in Slovakia, and start a girls soccer team there! (The entire audience erupts in cheer.) It was moving, thoughtful, self-aware, and well-delivered. And of course afterward, I got a slew of parents asking me if their kids could present, and we have a 10-year-old lined up for February.   

You can see more photos from PKN Providence Vol. 10 in this Flickr photoset.

PKN Providence Vol. 9

December 10th, 2009

PKN Providence Vol. 9

PechaKucha Night in Providence Vol. 9 was held in mid-November, and here’s a look at a few photos from the event courtesy of organizer Stephanie Gerson. PKN Providence Vol. 10 is already scheduled for January 13.

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PKN Providence Vol. 8

November 4th, 2009

PKN Providence Vol. 8

Last week’s PechaKucha Night in Providence Vol. 8 had the theme of “social entrepreneurship,” and organizer Stephanie Gerson fills us on the evening that was.

October 28th, 2009 witnessed our 8th PechaKucha Night in Providence. (Indeed, we coincided with Pittsboro, North Carolina, Tromsø, Norway, and of course, the big Design Week PechaKucha Night in Tokyo!) Our theme was social entrepreneurship, which was chosen to generate momentum for the Social Enterprise Summit at Bryant University on November 12th, and for an exciting announcement about Providence that Ashoka – the largest network of social entrepreneurs in the world – will be making at the Summit. We were wowed by an impressive diversity of local social entrepreneurs, but if I must select a few to highlight, allow me to plug two who’ll be part of the Summit.

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